hankyoreh

1) A sign on a building in a university in Seoul advising students from China or those with symptoms to “not enter”
2) A Chinese student in Korea who placed himself under self-quarantine subsided on instant meals, boxed lunches, and fruit while confined to her home.
3) 16 days’ worth of trash builds up in the Chinese student’s apartment.
4) The student had to resort to storing her compost in the freezer to avoid the stench.

“No Chinese allowed.”

The red letters on the white piece of paper are an unpleasant sight for Jang Rin, 28 (pseudonym). Six years have passed since he came to South Korea in 2014 from his home in Huangshan, China, intent on studying Korea’s culture industry. Jang, who has come to think of Korea as a second home while studying and working here, has recently experienced Sinophobia for the first time, and it came as an unfamiliar horror. A link to yet another article about demands for halting deliveries to areas with a high Chinese population was shared on WeChat (a chatting app used by many Chinese), and hateful reactions are frequently seen online.

“I felt more hurt than worried. When South Korea-China relations were positive, people hung up signs in Chinese and welcomed us, but now they’re telling us to stay away,” Jang said. While claiming to “fully understand” what Koreans are feeling, she wasn’t able to keep the bitterness from her face.

During the month and a half since COVID-19, the disease resulting from the novel coronavirus, began to spread, Jang and other Chinese students have seen their entire lives turned upside down. Within just days of being posted on the Blue House website on Jan. 23, a petition for Chinese to be banned from entering the country had been signed by more than 450,000 people; the petition ultimately got 761,833 signatures.

Since the outbreak, Chinese students have been walking in a fog, barely able to see a few feet in front of them. Because of the difficulty of accessing South Korean websites from China, these students have to arrive in South Korea at least a month before classes start to find a lodging place, register for classes, pay tuition and extend their visa, among other things. Sinophobia has been especially frightening for new arrivals from China who don’t know much about Korea. “New students would post questions on Chinese student chatrooms in WeChat asking about what Koreans think of Chinese students and whether they’d be able to make friends here,” Jang said.

Those who are about to graduate also have serious concerns. Ping Ping, 26, (pseudonym), who visited her home of Wuhan for the Lunar New Year, has been stuck in China since Feb. 4, when the South Korean government banned entry for foreigners from Hubei Province, where Wuhan is located. Ping Ping needs to take her graduation exam this coming August, so the entry ban means an indefinite delay of her graduation. Online classes aren’t an option for graduate students who need to defend their dissertation or complete their comprehensive exams.

“To finish my master’s program, all I have to do is take my exit exam, but I can’t leave my house. Even if I do manage to get back to Korea, I’m worried people will give me strange looks or feel repulsed by me,” she said. Ping Ping is one of 33,613 of the 70,983 Chinese students enrolled at South Korean universities who weren’t able to return to the country by March because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Since Jang is slated to graduate from her Master’s program this August, she had no choice but to return to Korea. But getting into the country wasn’t easy. After buying tickets to Korea on Feb. 1, Jang started feeling nervous. The mysterious virus had been dubbed the “Wuhan pneumonia” in South Korea at the end of January, and some worried people started talking about firing their Chinese housekeepers on internet portals and online communities.

Out of anxiety, Jang asked her academic advisor whether it was okay to return to Korea and linked some articles about Sinophobia. Jang’s advisor warmly reassured her that most Koreans would welcome him and that she’d be able to continue her studies, but Jang couldn’t be so easily reassured. “I was afraid that people would figure out I was from China if I spoke Chinese in Korea. People associate China with the infection.”

Jang’s family members also tried to stop her from returning to Korea, recommending that she wait until the outbreak had subsided. But there was no guarantee of when she’d have another chance to enter the country. Cancelling her trip to Korea would mean cancelling the plans she’d laid for his life. She finally persuaded her parents to let her travel to Korea. She arrived on the last direct flight from Huangshan.

When I met Jang in Seoul on Mar. 18, he looked extremely nervous. After arriving on Feb. 1, she’d spent 16 days in self-quarantine, only emerging from her house the day before. She greeted me in fluent Korean, wearing a white mask running from her forehead to her chin and a mint-colored hood pulled down low. Her eyes kept darting around the area, and her fingers twitched, indicating his anxiety and unease.

One of the biggest reasons that Jang opted for self-quarantine despite having no symptoms of COVID-19 was because of the bad looks that Chinese were getting from Koreans. Thinking about her neighbors at her low-rise apartment and the other Koreans she might run into on the street or in restaurants, she felt it would be better to remain at home. “Even though I didn’t have any symptoms, my landlords — an elderly couple who live next door — were really worried. When they asked if I had any symptoms and if I was feeling okay, I decided to quarantine myself; I was afraid I’d scare them if I went out,” she said.

Those 16 days passed by slower than she’d expected. The eighth day was the hardest of all. After getting into bed following another monotonous, repetitive day, Jang found herself thinking of the people who’d once shared her apartment. She figured that, if she’d only had some friends around, her quarantine wouldn’t feel so stifling and unbearable. But Jang won’t be seeing her two Chinese roommates again — they weren’t able to enter Korea because of the outbreak. One roommate, who was attending a language school, quit the program with just one semester to go, while the other, an undergraduate at her university, applied for a leave of absence.

It’s not easy to spend 16 days in self-quarantine as a resident alien, without any friends or family to help out. Jang only ate enough to take the edge off her hunger. She focused on food that would be easy to prepare without producing much trash, such as Chinese instant noodles and prepackaged meals. She didn’t think she could deal with all the garbage left from meal deliveries and processed foods. She considered stepping outside briefly to take out the garbage, but the thought of the elderly couple next door watching her nervously stopped him in her tracks. During his 16 days in quarantine, she filled two 75-liter garbage bags. Her house stank from the trash piling up inside.

Even after Jang’s self-quarantine period was over, her worries didn’t vanish. Making matters worse was the fact that her lease was coming up in February. The silver lining was that she was able to move into the apartment of another Chinese student who couldn’t return to Korea, but that still left the move itself. And she had to organize not only her own things, but also those of her two absent roommates. It was only after some serious downsizing of still usable items —she had to throw away half and give half to other students — that she was able to complete the move.

On Feb. 26, before she’d even finished unpacking, Jang dropped by the immigration office in Seoul to apply for an extension to his visa, which was set to expire at the end of March. After answering some basic questions about why she needed the extension, Jang emerged from the office with a lot on her mind. She needed the extension to graduate, but the outbreak was creating uncertainty about when classes would begin and when she might be able to graduate. She’d returned to Korea despite the stares that Chinese were getting, as if they themselves were the virus, but now things were different. As of Mar. 9, the number of cases of COVID-19 in the country had surpassed 7,000, and Sinophobia is giving way to “Koreaphobia.”

Day after day, Jang gets messages on WeChat from concerned family members. They tell her to stay inside and buy up instant noodles because Korea’s become dangerous. Things are more stable in China now, they tell her, so she ought to come back. One expert said that, in the worst-case scenario, as much as 40% of the South Korean public could get infected, a prediction that has shaken Jang’s resolve to remain in the country until he graduates. “These days, I often see Chinese students near the school in masks, wearing ponchos as makeshift protective gear, and pulling suitcases behind them. They’re all going home, presuming that China is safer than Korea. I’m still mulling things over and haven’t paid my tuition yet. What do you think I should do?” Jang lets out a long sigh.

By Kwon Ji-dam, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]